Throughout his tenure at Final Week Tonight, late-night host John Oliver has criticized many elements of the NFL—from commissioner Roger Goodell’s dealing with of home abuse claims in opposition to the league’s gamers to alleged office mistreatment of cheerleaders. On Sunday’s episode, Oliver flat-out declared that soccer “possibly shouldn’t exist” as a sport.
“There may be already primetime programming the place individuals kill themselves for our leisure—it’s referred to as Monday Night time Soccer,” Oliver mentioned as a lead-in to a section on crime reporting. “Completely happy concussion season, soccer followers! It positive seems like this sport possibly shouldn’t exist.”
Oliver’s remarks got here amidst reform of the NFL’s concussion protocol. Throughout a September 25 recreation, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained an damage after being hit and appeared to stumble when strolling off the sphere. He was later mentioned to have suffered a again damage and was allowed to return to the sport throughout its second half. 4 days later, Tagovailoa exhibited signs of a concussion after one other deal with on the sphere. He’s at present being handled underneath the league’s concussion protocols and didn’t play in opposition to the New York Jets Sunday.
“We don’t consider this was a significant utility of the protocols,” NFL Gamers Affiliation president and former Cleveland Browns participant JC Tretter wrote on Twitter Saturday. “No one, together with the NFL, believes he ought to have been put again within the recreation. It’s problematic that he was cleared for a again damage for which the lead medical doctors by no means took the time to look at.”
The NFL and NFL Gamers Affiliation have since said that “whereas the step-by-step course of outlined within the Concussion Protocol was adopted, the result, on this case, was not what was supposed when the Protocol was drafted,” in response to Tagovailoa’s accidents. Starting this Sunday, “ataxia” or “abnormality of steadiness/stability, motor coordination dysfunctional speech brought on by neurological difficulty” shall be utilized to the listing of “no-go” signs inside the concussion protocols. Underneath these new pointers, Tagovailoa would have been prohibited from taking part in in the remainder of that Sept. 25 match-up.
